PHP Programming with my sql by Don Gosselin

[morrism35]

Have any of you read this book? My instructor assigned this book for us in our php programming course. Do any of you have any recommendations for another book. I'm looking for something that gives a code example but explains the code in greater detail, that way it re-enforces concepts that you learned earlier in the book. This book gives a lot of code on how to do something, but doesn't break down the why it works that way. On a different subject, how long does it take for most people to read a chapter in a programming book about 50-60 pages long on a subject that you have no to limited knowledge of.

[mac_gyver]

by the time you get to reading or writing 'code that does something', you need to have already learned the basics of the php/sql languages, so that you can read the code/queries and get the gist of what they are doing.

 

if the book just starts presenting complete code examples, that take more than 10-20 lines to do something, it's not a beginner book to use to learn the php/sql languages or to learn programming in general.

 

if you need to learn the basics of php, to get you to the point of being able to read/understand what existing code does, make use of the php.net documentation. see the 'Language Reference' section, sub-sections - 'Basic syntax' through 'Functions', and 'Predefined Variables', followed by the 'Security', 'Features', 'Function Reference', 'FAQ', and 'Appendices' sections, followed by most of the other sections as you move into more advanced coding.